VERONA, N.Y., April 7 - For years, David L. Smith cooked wild game forhis Fire Department's annual fund-raising sportsmen banquet. It was hisway to help out after he retired from the department's volunteer corps.

At this year's banquet, on March 13, more than 300 townsfolk sampled hisdishes - the venison meatballs, chili and patties. Three weeks later,Mr. Smith was trying to forget the whole affair with a whiskey at thelocal V.F.W. "My wife said they'd come to get me," he said.

Through unlucky circumstance, tissue samples from a deer that one farmerdonated for the banquet tested positive for chronic wasting disease, andthe results were discovered after the meat had been eaten at thebanquet. It is the deer version of mad cow disease, and the firstdocumented case in New York.

Though people have become ill with mad cow disease from eating infectedbeef, no human is known to have become ill by eating infected venison.No one has even remotely blamed Mr. Smith. But his trepidation anddejection about the disease seemed to be felt throughout this rural areasome 250 miles northwest of Manhattan, where deer hunting is part of theculture. "It's scary to a lot of people," said the V.F.W.'s bartender,Diana Dodge.

Since the disease was found, agriculture, health and environmentalworkers have been trying to find out how it came here and how many ofthe state's 10,000 deer might be infected.

The deer that tested positive was one of 18 being raised by an outdoorsenthusiast, John Palmer, who lives in Westmoreland, a neighboring town.

Mr. Palmer operates a neatly kept taxidermy business in his garage,where deer mountings lined the entranceway and a black bear was stillbeing stuffed. He sent the sample from the deer he donated as part of anannual state-mandated monitoring program - not because he was suspiciousof infection.

Shortly after the first case was found, the state killed his entire herdto learn about the spread of the disease. Mr. Palmer appeared asdejected as the cook, saying with a shrug, "I'd love to comment, butI've been told by my attorney not to."

Tests later showed three other deer from Mr. Palmer's farm were alsosick. "It wasn't all 18," said Jessica Chittenden, a spokeswoman for thestate's Agriculture Department. "This leads us to believe it was afairly recent introduction."

Investigators also linked the recent death of another deer to thedisease. It was on land owned by Martin Proper, who lives near Mr.Palmer and obtained the deer from him.

Next week, conservationists will begin shooting 420 wild deer in thearea to see if they, too, have the disease. Hubert A. Pritchard, a dairyfarmer and the Westmoreland town supervisor, gave permission for huntingon his farmland, though his wife was sad about it. "I like to see thedeer," said Nancy Pritchard, resting in a chair in her driveway, with acat snuggling by her feet and a cow giving birth in the pasture acrossthe road.

"If they take that many deer out of the area, it'll be a long timebefore they come back," Mr. Pritchard said. "But we don't know a lotabout this disease, and I feel, err on the side of caution."

Another neighbor, Leo Wierzbicki, said he hunted every season and wouldeat the venison in his freezer. The Pritchards's son, James, agreed,"You don't stop eating beef because of mad cow disease."

Chronic wasting disease can be transmitted among deer through food andcontact, scientists say. It is a part of a family of diseases thatscientists believe are caused by a malformed protein, or a prion, thataffects the brain and is always fatal.

Though the disease has not jumped between species, it is theoreticallypossible. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises peopleagainst eating infected venison as a precautionary measure.

At the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at CaseWestern Reserve University, experiments in transgenic mice are under wayto determine the likelihood of the disease jumping from deer to humans,said Dr. Pierluigi Gambetti, director of the pathology center.Researchers are also trying to map out its unique characteristics, sothat if it ever appears in humans, it can be easily linked to the deerdisease and not to other prion diseases that kill 300 people annuallynationwide.

"Prion diseases are serious issues for public health," Dr. Gambettisaid, because they affect both humans and animals, are contagious andare very infectious. For example, the diseases are thought to survive onsurgical tools even after sterilization, he said.

Dr. Alfonso Torres, executive director of an animal health diagnosticcenter at Cornell University, said little research money for priondiseases had been spent on chronic wasting disease. "There are still alot of scientific gaps in how the diseases work and are transmitted," hesaid, adding that scientists learned a lot from the mad cow threat thatswept through Europe.

The Oneida County Health Department notified several hundred people whomay have attended the banquet, and 68 of them responded, said spokesmanKenneth Fanelli, adding, "They're not particularly alarmed or concerned."

Many were reassured that other states had dealt with this disease fordecades without human infection, he said, adding, "You can't ignore the30 years of history."

At the V.F.W., Jack Knight agreed. He had eaten the venison and wasjoking with Mr. Smith, the cook. "It's no big deal," he said. "What areyou going to do besides slap yourself upside the head? They say there'sno danger."

"It will affect attendance next year," Mr. Smith said about the banquet."I bet we won't sell 50 tickets."